This invention relates to meters useful in vehicles, and more particularly to a meter of the type having a swivelling pointer made of a transparent or translucent material and illuminated by light transmitted therethrough.
In regard of meters for vehicles and particularly meters for installation on an instrument panel in automobiles, various methods have been proposed to provide a radiant or illuminated indicator point.
In one of these methods, the dial plate of the meter is provided with a light source to illuminate a pointer, which is made of a transparent or translucent material, by introducing reflected rays of light into a root portion of the pointer. In this method, however, only a fraction of light emitted from the light source is utilized to illuminate the pointer, so that the brightness of the pointer is insufficient unless use is made of a large light source. Where the light source is a light bulb, the difficulty of disassemblage for replacement of a broken light bulb becomes another disadvantage of this method.
Also it has been proposed to dispose a light source in a root portion of a transparent or translucent pointer. However, this method has encountered difficulties in mechanically supporting the light source and in supplying a current to the light source. In other words, meters according to this method are still unsatisfactory both as regards their production and in maintainability.